DorpatSherrardLomonthttps://pauldorpat.com
Now & Then here and nowThu, 04 Jun 2020 20:14:43 +0000en-US
hourly
1 https://s0.wp.com/i/webclip.pngDorpatSherrardLomonthttps://pauldorpat.com
323230281034Seattle Now & Then: Plymouth Church marks its 150th anniversaryhttps://pauldorpat.com/2020/06/04/seattle-now-then-plymouth-church-marks-its-150th-anniversary/
https://pauldorpat.com/2020/06/04/seattle-now-then-plymouth-church-marks-its-150th-anniversary/#respondThu, 04 Jun 2020 16:50:27 +0000https://pauldorpat.com/?p=60416Continue reading Seattle Now & Then: Plymouth Church marks its 150th anniversary→]]>(click and click again to enlarge photos)THEN: With its distinctive pillars, Plymouth’s third church building stood facing east on Sixth Avenue between Seneca and University Streets (ca. 1939). After structural damage from the 1965 Puget Sound earthquake, it was demolished and replaced by the current building. (Museum of History and Industry)NOW1: The Rev. Dr. Kelle Brown, lead pastor since 2017, stands in Plymouth Pillars Park overlooking downtown to the west. The columns, original to Plymouth’s third church building, were purchased by John and Anne Gould Hauberg and donated to the city. They were installed in October 1967 on the tiny, triangular parcel at the corner of Boren Avenue and Pike Street. (Jean Sherrard)NOW2: Today’s Plymouth is one of the last of what Brown calls “big steeple churches” in downtown Seattle. On a recent Sunday morning, the building was empty as she delivered her sermon online. (Jean Sherrard)

(Published in the Seattle Times online on June 4, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on June 7, 2020)

Historic downtown church confronts Seattle’s ‘original sin’

By Jean Sherrard

This past Jan. 25, during an evening lecture at Plymouth Congregational Church, historian David Buerge spoke of the city’s “original sin”: 54,000 acres taken from the Duwamish Tribe without recompense, leaving Chief Seattle’s people, who had so warmly welcomed early settlers, landless and homeless.

In response, the Rev. Dr. Kelle Brown, Plymouth’s lead pastor, had a forward-looking suggestion. “We have been squatting on First People’s land for nearly 170 years,” she said. “We’ve been blessed with the beautiful asset of this property. It’s time for the church to begin paying down our debt.”

Only a week past the 150th anniversary of the church’s first Sunday service, her audience voiced strong support for initiating discussions with the tribe. Those familiar with Plymouth and its long history of civic engagement were not surprised. From women’s suffrage and civil rights to immigration and homelessness, the church has wrestled with thorny issues of every era.

Before the church’s founding in 1870, Mayflower descendants John and Carolyn Sanderson determined that Seattle, with a population of nearly 1,000 mostly single men, lacked ecclesiastical choice. Methodists and Episcopalians had established solid toeholds here, but Congregationalism (with direct links to the Pilgrims) might add the tempting solidity of Plymouth Rock.

Their choice of pastor, charismatic John F. Damon – also a prominent Mason – was propitious. Church historian Mildred Andrews notes that Damon was “skilled at playing upon the emotions of his hearers” and in high demand for both weddings and funerals (at which there was “never a dry eye”).

Becoming known throughout the region as the “marrying parson,” Damon soon drew crowds of 100 for both morning and evening Sunday services, a staggering 20% of the town’s population. Pioneer Arthur Denny, lured from the Methodists, was inspired to donate a lot at Second Avenue and Spring Street for Plymouth’s first church.

This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the church’s most ambitious offshoot. In 1980, after witnessing men sleeping rough on the church’s doorstep, the Rev. David Colwell braced his congregation: “One homeless person is one too many.” Today, Plymouth Housing provides supportive dwellings for more than 1,200 people in 14 buildings across the city.

For her part, Brown envisions a vital role for the church in years to come: “We must never lose sight of the most vulnerable, the most disenfranchised, and make sure that as a church, the lens we use is one of justice.” Plymouth’s proposal to enfranchise the Duwamish people will take a pioneering step toward atonement.

WEB EXTRAS

]]>https://pauldorpat.com/2020/06/04/seattle-now-then-plymouth-church-marks-its-150th-anniversary/feed/060416Seattle Now & Then: Front Street Cable Railway after Great Seattle Fire, 1889https://pauldorpat.com/2020/05/28/seattle-now-then-post-fire-front-street-cable-railway-1889/
https://pauldorpat.com/2020/05/28/seattle-now-then-post-fire-front-street-cable-railway-1889/#commentsThu, 28 May 2020 14:00:41 +0000https://pauldorpat.com/?p=60327Continue reading Seattle Now & Then: Front Street Cable Railway after Great Seattle Fire, 1889→]]>(click and click again to enlarge photos)THEN: With inscrutable countenances typical in photos from the era, 15 men look southeast along Front Street (now First Avenue) while surrounding the #6 grip car and #2 trailer car of the Front Street Cable Railway in June 1889 following the Great Seattle Fire. Framing them is the gloomy façade of Merchants National Bank. (Courtesy Dan Kerlee and Orv Mallott)NOW: In place of the 1889 cable-car posers and on the cusp of the 131st anniversary of the Great Seattle Fire, historical photo-collecting friends Dan Kerlee (left) of Magnolia and Orv Mallott of Federal Way stand at First and Cherry. The 10-story parking garage behind them was built in 1968. (Jean Sherrard)

(Published in the Seattle Times online on May 28, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on May 31, 2020)

Cable-car bells signaled ‘back to normal’ after Great Seattle Fire

By Clay Eals

Have you ever unearthed an old family photo you’ve never seen before? Instantly, it’s a treasure.

Seattle has its own family album, with familiar images of legendary events. To the many photos depicting the aftermath of the devastating June 6, 1889, Great Seattle Fire, this week we add a rare stunner.

Its focus is crisp, its vertical orientation unusual and its composition arresting. The torn corner even contributes charm. Best of all, in spotlighting the fledgling Front Street Cable Railway, it symbolizes the Seattle’s resilience and determination to rebuild after the fire destroyed the city’s 30-block core.

Backed by the peaked façade of burned-out Merchants National Bank, this view looks northwest along Front Street (today’s First Avenue) just north of its intersection with Cherry Street, along what had been Seattle’s showpiece commercial strip. Behind the photographer was what would become the resurrected Pioneer Square.

Contrary to a handwritten caption that denotes the fire date, the photo likely was taken days afterward, perhaps on Tuesday, June 18. That’s when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that the private cable line, which had opened three months prior to the fire, was resuming service after repairing its heat-warped underground guide-irons.

Jacob Furth, president, Front Street Cable Railway (Seattle Times)

The firm’s nattily dressed executives seem to have been among the posers, including what appears to be Jacob Furth, president, the only bareheaded gent.

More efficient electric streetcars were to prevail in the coming century, but in 1889 cable cars were the height of urban transit. Rides cost 5 cents, and cars traveled up to 10 mph. This line ran to and from the terminus depicted here, north along Front Street, jogging to Second Street (now avenue) and over then-Denny Hill (now the regraded Belltown) to a car barn at Depot Street (Denny Way).

For this line, cars traveled in pairs. An open “grip car” generated movement when a gripman pulled a handle to grasp a moving underground cable, while an unpowered, closed trailer car tagged along. Shown here are #6 of the firm’s six grip cars and #2 of its six trailers. The gripman stands, center, in dark uniform. Above his right arm is a cord he would pull to ring a bell alerting the conductor, in striped hat, and pedestrians of a change in speed.

Today, the only such manually operated cable railway in the world is, of course, in San Francisco, where 27 single cars propel no trailers. In times when we’re not social distancing, it is the only way to come close to experiencing the cable-car page of Seattle’s family album.

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

We extend special thanks to Mike Bergman and Ron Edge for their assistance in the preparation of this column.

(Published in the Seattle Times online on May 21, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on May 24, 2020)

For West Seattle’s bridge, if at first you don’t succeed, secede!

By Clay Eals

Sounds screwy, but having reported on it when it was built, I still call it the new bridge:

The busy West Seattle Bridge, until recently second in city traffic only to Interstate 5.

The span swooping 157 feet over the Duwamish Waterway that linked a massive peninsula with the rest of Seattle.

The arch that elevated West Seattle to hipness from relative obscurity, ensnaring the district in a citywide development boom.

The towering roadway that opened not that long ago – can it really be 36 years?

And now, to protect the public, it’s been closed since March 23 for incalculable, indeterminate repairs. Not to reopen until 2022, if at all.

Coping with the coronavirus and now possessing only a circuitous way out, West Seattle could be said to be on double lockdown. It’s a fine time to reflect on a dramatic juncture from 1978 that makes today’s bridge turmoil seem like Yogi Berra’s “déjà vu all over again.”

After years of scandals and broken city promises to build a high bridge to replace two run-down but frequently opening, traffic-clogging drawbridges built in 1924 and 1930, the peninsula’s civic leaders were fed up. On March 29, 1978, a who’s who of West Seattle launched a campaign to secede from Seattle.

Though some thought it a joke, it had a straight-faced rationale: A separate West Seattle would become the state’s fourth largest city, with stronger status to secure money for a high bridge to connect with top dog Seattle. Secession required citywide balloting, including by those outside of West Seattle not anxious to shed a hefty tax base. But the secession campaign, said chair Dick Kennedy, was “deadly serious.”

Quickly, petitions filled with signatures approaching half the number to force a secession vote, when at 2:58 a.m. Sunday, June 11, an enormous freighter rammed the east end of the opened 1924 drawbridge, freezing it upward and beyond repair. The culprit was the now-legendary three-minute “lack of concentration” of 80-year-old pilot Rolf Neslund, who, bizarrely, later was murdered by his wife.

The ramming produced the best pun in West Seattle history: “the night the ship hit the span.” The immediate result – eight lanes of traffic squashed into four on the remaining, functioning 1930 low bridge – is depicted in our “Then” photo.

Officials leapt into action. Warren Magnuson, our longtime U.S. senator, secured $110 million for a freeway-like high bridge. Other jurisdictions chipped in lesser amounts. Secession fizzled. Construction began in November 1980. Eastbound lanes opened in November 1983, westbound lanes in July 1984.

Fast living, however, takes a toll. The high span was to last 75 years but hasn’t made it halfway. How long before the city builds another new bridge?

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below are two video links and four additional photos as well as 14 clippings, mostly from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

]]>https://pauldorpat.com/2020/05/21/seattle-now-then-bridges-to-west-seattle-1978/feed/060257Mount St. Helens erupts: The 40th anniversary!https://pauldorpat.com/2020/05/17/mount-st-helens-erupts-the-40th-anniversary/
https://pauldorpat.com/2020/05/17/mount-st-helens-erupts-the-40th-anniversary/#commentsSun, 17 May 2020 14:00:06 +0000https://pauldorpat.com/?p=60217Continue reading Mount St. Helens erupts: The 40th anniversary!→]]>(click and click again to enlarge photos)The cover of the May 17, 2020, PacificNW magazine of The Seattle Times

We are fortunate that the editors of PacificNW magazine of The Seattle Times asked us to prepare a cover-story package for the magazine’s print edition scheduled for Sunday, May 17, 2020, one day prior to the 40th anniversary of the mountain’s May 18, 1980, eruption.

Below are links to what we came up with. We hope you enjoy it all.

We also invite you to use the comment section to send us your own St. Helens stories and photos!

Most of these stories originated via the Mount St. Helens Visitor Center, thanks to interpretive specialist Alysa Adams. They are edited by us and are presented in alphabetical order.

]]>https://pauldorpat.com/2020/05/17/mount-st-helens-erupts-the-40th-anniversary/feed/360217Seattle Now & Then: Suess & Smith Art Glass, 1906https://pauldorpat.com/2020/05/07/seattle-now-then-suess-smith-art-glass-1906/
https://pauldorpat.com/2020/05/07/seattle-now-then-suess-smith-art-glass-1906/#commentsThu, 07 May 2020 14:00:43 +0000https://pauldorpat.com/?p=59687Continue reading Seattle Now & Then: Suess & Smith Art Glass, 1906→]]>(click and click again to enlarge photos)THEN1: Smith descendant Curt Green photographed this immense Suess & Smith three-panel window in about 1980 when it hung at the Frye Hotel. Its whereabouts are elusive. When was it made? Does it depict a real-life scene? If you have clues, please enter them below! (Curt Green)THEN2: Workers at Suess & Smith look eastward outside their storefront at 2421 Western Ave. in about 1906. The firm’s move to Virginia Street near Westlake Avenue in 1909 came none too soon, as an eight-block fire on June 10, 1910, destroyed this building, including next-door Wall Street House, causing a total of $500,000 in damage. No one died. (Courtesy Curt Green)NOW: Grouped across Western Avenue from the Belltown Apartments, where Suess & Smith Co. once stood, are (from left) Suess descendants Gloria Elda Suess Abbenhouse, Martin Suess Abbenhouse, Susan Marks and Keetje Abbenhuis, and Smith descendants Sebastian Schaad, Barbara Schaad-Lamphere, Theo Schaad, Deborah Riedesel, Paula Green, Curt Green, Jessica Murphy and David Green. (Jean Sherrard)

(Published in the Seattle Times online on May 7, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on May 10, 2020)

Help us solve the mystery of this Suess & Smith masterwork

By Clay Eals

This week, we present a puzzle. It centers on a national innovator in aesthetic glass that brightened downtown Seattle more than a century ago.

The glitter of the Gold Rush lured members of two German families, named Suess and Smith, to Seattle from Chicago in the late 1890s. But physical gold was not their destiny. Their Klondike expedition produced meager earnings, so in boomtown Seattle they marched to a different shimmer.

During the height of the international Art Nouveau movement, Suess & Smith Co. opened in 1901 on Western Avenue near Wall Street (in today’s Belltown), specializing in leaded, cut and stained glass. Soon it branched into plate and window glass for major buildings as well as memorial windows, lampshades, mirrors and “glass of all descriptions.” The business morphed in October 1906 to Suess Art Glass Co. and moved to Virginia Street near Westlake Avenue in fall 1909.

The firm’s display at that year’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition on the University of Washington campus drew acclaim from The Coast magazine as “one of the most attractive and interesting art exhibits upon the grounds, appealing to the truly artistic and demonstrating the high grade and excellence of the home product of a Seattle industry.”

Three years later, for the city’s second Golden Potlatch industrial parade, the company mounted an all-glass, award-winning float with an impact “never before seen in this country,” reported The Seattle Times. “Had the sun been shining as brilliantly as it did a few days before, it would have been almost impossible for anyone standing in the direct rays to withstand the brilliancy of the different prismatic effects from the reflection of lights on this float.”

Inspirational commissions abounded, from a triple window depicting recently slain President William McKinley for a Bremerton church in 1902 to the gleaming cupola for The Coliseum theater (today’s Banana Republic store) in 1916. The enterprise continued until at least 1951.

Cover of “Suess Ornamental Glass” by Deborah Suess Weaver, 2019.

Today, descendants have dug into the genealogical and commercial history of both families. This work produced a book, “Suess Ornamental Glass: Chicago~Seattle,” by Deborah Suess Weaver of Tonasket. On the Smith side, Theo Schaad of West Seattle also has written a lengthy narrative.

Here’s the puzzle: The families seek details about a Suess & Smith stained-glass masterwork they feel deserves public display. It’s a gold-hued, 7-by-10-foot, three-panel piece (see top of page) depicting a couple in what might be a Bavarian courtyard. It once hung at the Frye Hotel at Second and Yesler. Clues to its whereabouts lead to Skagway, Alaska, “Gateway to the Klondike,” but the coronavirus might limit access there for now.

Might you, kind readers, have information or insight to keep this inquiry aglow?

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column, when it is posted Thursday afternoon!

As a special treat courtesy of the Fall City Historical Society, we present a complete scan, in three parts, of the 80-page sales book “Ornamental Glass: Suess Ornamental Glass Company, Chicago, Illinois” (1904). You can access the three parts here:

(Published in the Seattle Times online on April 30, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on May 3, 2020)

Jefferson school days echo in the May memories of its students

By Clay Eals

In our coronaviral days of school closures and social distancing and with May Day here, this week’s “Then” image might be poignant. It depicts 130 people posing for a group photo at West Seattle’s Jefferson Elementary School on Saturday, June 1, 1985, just 17 days before it fell victim to the wrecking ball.

As editor of the West Seattle Herald, I organized the gathering to document the passing of a building in which thousands of students spent formative years, from its opening in 1911 until 1979, when plummeting enrollment and soaring renovation costs sealed its fate.

The former Jefferson students and staff who turned out faced 42nd Avenue while our fearless photographer, Brad Garrison, perched atop an 8-foot wooden stepladder to capture the scene. The print’s upper edge is irregular because, for effect, the photo ran large on the front page, extending up into the newspaper’s nameplate.

The school, named for our third president, designed by Edgar Blair and built one block east of West Seattle’s Junction business district, had an enduring effect of its own – on its students.

“We bleed Jefferson,” says Lisa McCandless Bernardez, who attended in the mid-1970s. Every five years since, she has reunited with her best friend, Jefferson classmate Sue Haynie Craig, at the salad bar inside the Safeway anchoring the full-block complex that replaced the school and opened in August 1987.

Some recall the edifice’s crowded baby-boom classrooms (nearly 1,000 students in 1953-1954), wooden desks and worn stairs, along with the “old smell you never forget.” Others cite civil defense (atomic bomb) drills and sneaking into the basement to discover long-abandoned rations and body tags.

Students also exploited the neighborhood’s business milieu to create meandering walking routes. Wayne Hagler, who attended in the late 1960s, says, “We’d go through the showroom of Gene Fiedler Chevrolet, then Lucky’s grocery, then the auto-parts store to get STP stickers, so a 20-minute walk home took 45 minutes.”

Most wish Jefferson could have been preserved and repurposed as were schools in Queen Anne, Wallingford and elsewhere. But the latter-day impact of its 33-year-old substitute, Jefferson Square, is undeniable. The five-level structure serves thousands of customers, workers and residents via retail storefronts (80,000 square feet), offices (67,000 square feet) and residential space (78 apartments).

Nevertheless, lingering today in the memories of Myra Bowen Skubitz, who attended in the mid-1940s, and Karen Arthur White who attended 10 years later, is Jefferson’s annual spring jamboree. It brought every student in the school to its enormous asphalt playground for dancing with streamers around a maypole and other fun. One can still imagine.

WEB EXTRAS

Below are two more memories of former Jefferson Elementary School students, 11 Jefferson-related photos and 16 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Robert Terrana. uncle of Lisa McCandless Bernardez who attended in the 1940s during World War II, recalls air-raid drills. ” We had to go down to the basement floor under the first floor. We had to stay there until they rang the bells when it was safe to go upstairs.” He also recalls the “nice, big, wide playground.” He recalls walking to school in the snow. “We had some big snowstorms, more than we have now. Winter used to be winter.” A lifelong West Seattleite, he will be 85 in August. “I used to be in some of the little skits they used to put on for the children in the auditorium. … When they had the March of Dimes campaign in January, they had those tables at California Avenue and Alaska, and I used to volunteer with that, helping with the announcing: ‘Give to March of Dimes. Put your dimes on the table.’ That was probably in sixth grade.”

John Carlson, longtime talk-show host for KVI, attended kindergarten and first grade in the 1960s. “I brought my copy of the album ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ to Show and Tell, but (kindergarten teacher) Mrs. Price said it was inappropriate. The following week I brought my collection of troll-sized Beatles dolls, pointing out that they were dolls, not Beatles toys. Mrs. Price was not impressed with my logic and said that if I brought any more Beatles memorabilia to class, it would be confiscated. Loved those days.”

The Arch of the Carrousel du Louvre, the Place de la Concorde with its obelisk, the Arch of the Place de l’Étoile and the Great Arch form the Royal Axis on the same perspective. The Tuileries Garden is the oldest « jardin à la française », which was designed by the gardener of Versailles, André le Nôtre at the request of Louis XIV.

]]>https://pauldorpat.com/2020/04/29/outside-my-window-ii/feed/259551Corona-diaries…https://pauldorpat.com/2020/04/28/corona-diaries/
https://pauldorpat.com/2020/04/28/corona-diaries/#commentsTue, 28 Apr 2020 16:37:20 +0000https://pauldorpat.com/?p=59501Continue reading Corona-diaries…→]]>Jean here. As many of you know, I’ve spent the last few weeks wandering the city, attempting to portray Seattle’s response to this pandemic. And it’s been nothing short of inspiring, particularly on the artistic front. Artists and muralists from across the region have gathered in Ballard, on Capitol Hill, in Pioneer Square, and Belltown, to bring color and form to otherwise dormant, plywood-covered streets. Here’s a selection of my faves (double-click to enlarge):

]]>https://pauldorpat.com/2020/04/28/corona-diaries/feed/359501Seattle Now & Then: Seattle Yacht Club clubhouse, 1926https://pauldorpat.com/2020/04/23/seattle-now-then-seattle-yacht-club-clubhouse-1926/
https://pauldorpat.com/2020/04/23/seattle-now-then-seattle-yacht-club-clubhouse-1926/#respondThu, 23 Apr 2020 14:00:09 +0000https://pauldorpat.com/?p=59430Continue reading Seattle Now & Then: Seattle Yacht Club clubhouse, 1926→]]>(click and click again to enlarge photos)THEN: Sixty women and three children, dressed in finery to greet Queen Marie of Romania, pose Nov. 4, 1926, along the west side of the then-six-year-old clubhouse of the Seattle Yacht Club. The hunch of our auto informant, Bob Carney, is that at left, the touring car in front is a 1924 or 1925 Cadillac, and the car behind it is a 1925 or 1926 Lincoln. For more info on the clubhouse and its centennial, visit the website of Seattle Yacht Club. (Museum of History & Industry, courtesy Seattle Yacht Club)NOW: The Seattle Yacht Club high-school sailing team, representing the club of the future (and backed by staff who keep the club humming), approximate the pose of their 1926 predecessors. Major changes since 1920 to the clubhouse and grounds, officially landmarked by the city in 2006, include enlarged windows (1946) and an expanded dining room (1967) at right. The photo looks more directly east than the “Then” image because the tree at left would obscure a more accurate repeat. Here’s who is in the photo: The high-school sailing team (front, from left): Matteo Horvat, Alex Shemwell, Ryan Milne, Anna Lindberg, Blake Weld, Taylor Burck, Aurora Kreyche, Isabel Souza, Caroline Schmale, Andy Roedel, Filippa Cable, Alvaro De Lucas and Alden Arnold. Staff (back, from left): Jose Cadena, Devon Cannon, sailing coach Cameron Hoard, Lynn Lawrence, Jorge Vallejo, Annee King, Carlos Sagastume, Jody Tapsak, Chef Alex Garcia, Mason Pollock, Natalia Ruiz-Jiminez, Kevin Martinez-Jara, Coner Hannum, Jenne Lawrence, Alicia Kern, Geoffrey Moore, Quang-Ngoc Tran, Shyheem Mitchell, Ellen Beardsley, Anthony Navarro, Juan Abrego-Hernandez, D’Andre Miller, Tiffiney Jones, Benjamin St. Clair, Jade Lennstrom, Jeremy Witham, general manager Amy Shaftel, Josie Weiss, Mike Young and Penny Slade.

(Published in the Seattle Times online on April 23, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on April 26, 2020)

Yacht club’s 1926 Montlake reception had a crowning touch

By Clay Eals

Royalty fueled the roar of the 1920s in Seattle on Nov. 4, 1926. That day, the city welcomed a woman whom The Seattle Times called the “most beautiful and gracious of all Europe’s feminine monarchs,” Queen Marie.

For the 51-year-old regal representative of Romania (then spelled Rumania), Seattle was but one destination on a cross-country tour. Accompanied in an open touring car by our first female mayor, Bertha Landes, the queen zipped through an afternoon of stops initially intended for a full day.

Queen Marie in 1926. (British Pathe)

She drew record crowds, and the city delighted her: “In all the towns I have visited, I have found none so beautiful as your Seattle. In each corner today, I have found a place where I should like to live.”

The fitting finale was the home of the Seattle Yacht Club. Its clubhouse, perched on Portage Bay, south of the University of Washington and north of today’s Highway 520, had opened six years earlier, on May 1, 1920. For a reception put on by “club women of the city” to honor the queen, the building burst with autumn blooms, its veranda rails draped in dahlias.

Only 200 of the 1,500 assembled women could greet Marie, however, because what was to be a one-hour stay lasted “scarcely more than 15 minutes.” This did not prevent 60 women – bonneted, like the queen – from posing outside with three youngsters, as our “Then” photo shows.

It’s no accident that a lighthouse-shaped cupola topped the clubhouse, which The Times called “the finest on the Coast and one of the finest in the United States.” Famed architect John Graham, Sr., certainly intended for the Colonial Revival/Shingle Style structure to complement the recently opened Lake Washington Ship Canal, including nearby Montlake Cut, which connected Portage Bay to the lake.

The parcel, formerly marshland and a landfill for the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition at the UW campus, became available for the club’s purchase after a casino proposed for the site fizzled. The club deemed the calm, freshwater setting a buoyant change from the rough weather, railroad noise, oil dumping and swells of passing steamboats that its boaters and craft had endured at saltwater bases on Elliott Bay and along the West Seattle shore since its founding in 1892.

Today, with 2,800 member families and myriad programs for all ages, Seattle Yacht Club is the oldest and largest such local organization.

The coronavirus scuttled its traditionally sponsored early-May merriment for Opening Day, but the club optimistically has rescheduled an elaborate celebration of its clubhouse centennial for Sept. 26. Sailing and motor vessels from the 1920s are to be on display, including one that participated on Opening Day in 1920.

One might envision the pending party as fit for a queen.

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column, when it is posted!

Below are a “Now” identifier photo and two other photos as well as 11 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.

And at the bottom, see a book excerpt relating to Queen Marie’s visit to the Seattle Yacht Club clubhouse on Nov. 4, 1926!

Here is an identifier photo for the “Now” photo above.Early clubhouse of Seattle Yacht Club at Duwamish Head in West Seattle, built in 1892. (Courtesy Seattle Yacht Club)Early clubhouse of Seattle Yacht Club and Elliott Bay Yacht Club in West Seattle, 1909. (Courtesy Seattle Yacht Club)April 25, 1920, Seattle Times, page 62May 3, 1920, Seattle Times, page 13Oct. 12, 1926, Seattle Times, page 13Nov. 2, 1926, Seattle Times, page 1Nov. 2, 1926, Seattle Times, page 7Nov. 4, 1926, Seattle Times, page 1Nov. 5, 1926, Seattle Times, page 11Nov. 5, 1926, Seattle Times, page 12, mainbar excerptNov. 5, 1926, Seattle Times, page 12, sidebarNov. 5, 1926, Seattle Times, page 12Nov. 5, 1926, Seattle Times, page 13Nov. 6, 1926, Seattle Times, page 5Excerpt from “On Tour with Queen Marie” (Robert M. McBride & Co, New York, March 1927), by Constance Lily Rothschild Morris, who accompanied Queen Marie on her tour of the United States and Canada in 1926. It is not known if the tree referenced here is the tree shown at left in our “Now” photo above. (Courtesy Mike Young)
]]>https://pauldorpat.com/2020/04/23/seattle-now-then-seattle-yacht-club-clubhouse-1926/feed/059430Seattle Now & Then: Kubota Garden, 1930shttps://pauldorpat.com/2020/04/16/seattle-now-then-kubota-garden-1930s/
https://pauldorpat.com/2020/04/16/seattle-now-then-kubota-garden-1930s/#respondThu, 16 Apr 2020 14:00:59 +0000https://pauldorpat.com/?p=59379Continue reading Seattle Now & Then: Kubota Garden, 1930s→]]>THEN: In this view looking northwest in Fujitaro Kubota’s garden in the 1930s, Kubota stands at far left as four visitors are reflected in a pond while posing at the Heart Bridge. This is one of 175 vintage and contemporary images in the new book “Spirited Stone,” sponsored by the Kubota Garden Foundation. (Courtesy Kubota Garden Foundation)NOW: Assembling on the Heart Bridge of Kubota Garden, for 33 years a city park, are (from left) Aubrey Unemori, book publisher Bruce Rutledge, Anna Carragee, Marjorie Lamarre and Jason Wirth, all representing the Kubota Garden Foundation, along with Renton’s Michelle Risinger and children Mari, Rylan and Charleston. To stay current on book and film events, visit the website of the Kubota Garden Foundation. (Jean Sherrard)

Discovering a healing heart for nature at Kubota Garden

By Clay Eals

With Earth Day now seemingly every day, symbolism abounds in Kubota Garden. This 20-acre park near Seattle’s southern city limits showcases a calming mix of greenery, stone and water, all buoyed by an early enhancement, the Heart Bridge. And in this uncertain era, more than ever we need heart.

Soon after officials invoked social distancing to slow the coronavirus, I wandered the garden’s vast and meandering paths. Beckoning with bright red railings was the diminutive bridge.

The garden’s founder, Fujitaro Kubota (1880-1973), who left Japan for America in 1907, installed the span a few years after acquiring the tract’s first five acres in 1927. It bolsters the entire park’s role as a refuge for contemplation, healing and renewal.

Its range of trees, pools and meadows is complemented by a bronze entry gate, ornamental wall, hanging bell, stone lantern and interlaced waterfalls, blending Japanese and American styles of landscaping. One can instantly internalize the careful combination of art and nature.

The peace it engenders was no effortless ethos to create, given that Kubota, with thousands of other stateside Japanese during World War II, was shunted into three years of incarceration at Minidoka, Idaho. There, the headstrong horticulturalist coped by leading the camp’s beautification. Post-war, he wept for hours when encountering his overgrown Seattle garden and struggled with back taxes, but he pushed on.

Naturalized in 1955, Kubota shaped public spaces of the Rainier Club, Seattle University and Bainbridge Island’s Bloedel Preserve as well as the grounds of countless residences.

The garden in South Seattle, however, was Kubota’s magnum opus. He didn’t live to see its splendor triumph over a 480-unit condo development scheme to become an official city landmark (1980) and city park (1987). But he maintained vision and a desire to share.

“Every rock and every key plant have a meaning,” he told The Seattle Times in imperfect English at age 82 in 1962. “I wish to leave in this ‘beautiful’ and ‘artistic.’ ”

That’s evident in a new, 230-page coffee-table book, “Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden,” with evocative essays and photos from 20 contributors. Infused with earthly humanity, the book is a stirring backgrounder for experienced visitors. For the uninitiated, it’s a lavish entree to Kubota’s story.

As expressed by Linda Kubota Byrd in a companion documentary, her grandfather embodied “an overarching spirit and a testament to the power of holding an intention.” In the same film, Bellevue landscape architect Don Shimono says Kubota devoted himself to working with nature, not against it.

“It seems like this whole planet is man trying to conquer nature,” Shimono adds, “and there’s no way nature is going to be conquered. Nature is going to have the last word.”

WEB EXTRAS

Seattle’s Jim Rupp, of the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild, observes that in our “Then” photo, “The fellow standing next to the seated woman (presumably his wife) is Dr. Henry Gowen, longtime UW professor for whom Gowen Hall is named.” That this is Gowen is bolstered by a photo of Gowen from the Museum of History and Industry, Rupp says.

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below are the cover of “Spirited Stone,” a map of Kubota Garden and 18 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.